The present disclosure generally relates to medical device systems and methods that provide patient monitoring and/or treatment delivery or other care to patients, and more specifically to medical device systems and methods including medical devices that detect proximity of other medical devices and/or non-medical devices associated with the patient and communicate to execute coordinated work flows.
In the field of medicine, patients are often connected to or associated with multiple separate medical devices at one time, each providing respective patient monitoring and/or treatment delivery and care functions. Oftentimes, such monitoring of multiple physiological characteristics involves the use of several monitoring devices simultaneously, such as a pulse oximeter, a blood pressure monitor, a cardiac monitor, a temperature monitor, etc. These monitoring devices may be separate devices or elements within a larger multifunction patient monitoring device. Additional monitoring, treatment, and/or support devices and systems may further be connected to or associated with the patient, such as for delivering fluids, medication, anesthesia, respiration assistance, etc. Each of these devices and systems have their own functions in the overall patient care, and each may generate one or more alarms to alert a clinician of a problem, which may be a problem with the patient's physiology or health status, or maybe a technical problem with the monitoring and/or treatment delivery device.